Exclusive: Companies that kept policies did just as well financially, even after Trump’s executive order, as those that didn’t

Companies that kept policies did just as well financially, even after Trump’s executive order, as those that didn’t

Conservative backlash was supposed to put an end to the diversity, inclusion and equity (DEI) movement as companies were warned “go woke, go broke”.

In January 2025, Donald Trump delivered a death knell, ending DEI within the federal government with executive orders and threatening to target companies that still supported it. Companies including Google, Goldman Sachs, McDonald’s and Walmart that had embraced DEI years earlier fell into line and announced an end to their policies.

But new research published on Friday and shared exclusively with the Guardian found that companies that resisted the pressure and kept their DEI practices, including Costco, Apple and Delta Air Lines, performed just as well as their competitors who pulled back.

  • DebraBucket@lemmy.world
    2·
    3 hours ago

    The side effect of DEI was, in many cases, a push toward combating nepotism, cronyism, and arbitrary hiring practices in favor of hiring based on merit.

    That was not a side effect, that was the intent. I worked on DEI initiatives. Nepotism, managers higher their friends instead of the most qualified candidate was part of those conversations, they were raised by the employees we talked to. All those things are forms of bias.

    The DEI framework wasn’t necessarily required to accomplish that.

    Intentionally addressing bias isn’t necessary to combat people who have a bias against those who are not their friends or family?

    By calling the entire project “DEI”, diversity, equity, and inclusion, the debate became about the meaning and implications of those words instead of focusing on the actual institutional problems we should be addressing.

    That’s literally what you’re doing though. You are claiming the problem is how we named it, and arguing if we had only referred to it as something else, it would not have been a problem.

    It’s easy to complain about the efforts trying to address a problem, it’s harder to actually put forth that effort.

    Also, if a political group wants to demonize something, it doesn’t matter what you name it, they will demonize it. You had states legalizing Civil Unions instead of Marriages for same-sex couples: they STILL demonized the relationships. People like you were saying “the name Marriage is the problem, just call it something else”. We clearly see now that the name was never the problem.